Protest outside federal gay marriage trial in SF
(San Francisco) About 100 people are demonstrating outside the federal courthouse in San Francisco as the trial for California’s gay marriage ban begins.
Most of the demonstrators are gay marriage supporters, who took turns Monday addressing the crowd with a microphone. They support the overturning of Proposition 8, a voter-approved law …
Gay pride activists march in Rome, Warsaw, Zagreb
(Rome) Tens of thousands of gay rights activists demanding rights for same-sex couples marched through the streets of Rome on Saturday in a gay pride parade.
Smaller marches wound through the capitals of heavily Catholic Poland and in Croatia, where counterdemonstrators shouted anti-gay and nationalist slogans.
In Rome, costumed demonstrators carrying rainbow …
Hundreds protest anti-gay, anti-Jewish group’s arrival In RHode Island
Hundreds of Rhode Islanders turned out on street corners Friday in spontaneous opposition to the anti-gay, anti-Jew message of a tiny group of demonstrators from Kansas. More than 300 students from East Providence High School crammed one corner of the city’s busiest intersection at Taunton and Pawtucket avenues as school let out. Some gripped neon signs supporting gay people. During the school day, students also wore yarmulkes to support their Jewish classmates. At another corner, 100 or so people, including high school alumni, gathered, holding signs such as “Teach Love, Not Hate” and “Our Giant Signs are Better than Yours.” One even had a pink bunny suit on with “I Love Boys” written on his belly. On a third corner, five members of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan., carried epithet-laden picket signs, denouncing homosexuality and declaring, “America is doomed” for tolerating gays and Jews. Various counter-protestors chanted — “Go Home” or “Gay is the Way” — and for a short time the shouts unified in obscenities. “I know a lot of gay people in my family,” freshman Jayden DeCosta said. “It’s anybody’s right to do what they want.”
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Original source : http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2009/05/hundreds-prot…
Hundreds march in Philly national gay rights rally
(Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) Hundreds of gay rights demonstrators marched through the streets of the city’s historic center on Sunday carrying rainbow-colored flags and signs calling for equal rights in marriage, in the workplace and in health care.
The National Equality Rally was billed as the first national demonstration since 2000 for gay, …
Cop Investigated for threatening rainbow flag carriers
(Casa Grande, Arizona) A Casa Grande police officer is under investigation after allegedly threatening to arrest a group of gay demonstrators for carrying a rainbow flag within city limits.
The small group of demonstrators on Wednesday was protesting US tax law, which does not allow same-sex couples to file joint returns. …
Backers Of Calif. Gay Marriage Ban Face Backlash
Since California voters passed a ban on gay marriage, some supporters of the measure have found themselves squarely in the bull’s-eye of angry gay rights activists.
It’s no secret who gave money for and against the controversial amendment to the state’s constitution, known as Proposition 8. California’s secretary of state publicized the lists of contributors, which were picked up by local media and Web sites.
And in the aftermath of a contentious campaign, protests followed. In Los Angeles, would-be patrons of a popular Tex-Mex restaurant were greeted by furious protestors like John Dennison.
“El Coyote — millions in gay margarita money funding hatred,” Dennison yelled during the protest. “Boycott El Coyote!”
The restaurant owner’s daughter, Margie Christofferson, a faithful Mormon, had made a modest $100 contribution to the “Yes on 8″ campaign — and the restaurant’s gay patrons, like Edward Stanley, felt betrayed.
“I won’t be eating here,” Stanley said.
Business dipped about 30 percent at the height of the protest, and it still hasn’t returned to pre-protest levels. Several members of the restaurant’s staff — including many of its gay employees — have seen their hours cut back in response. And Christofferson, who managed the restaurant, has resigned.
Others Feel The Heat
In Sacramento, the owners of Leatherby’s Family Creamery found themselves part of the backlash when The Sacramento Bee printed the list of contributors. Dave Leatherby, a devout Roman Catholic father of 10, says he was responding to a direct request from his bishop to give generously.
“We gave $20,000 for Yes on Proposition 8,” he says.
And once that was known, retaliation was swift. “We soon started getting very nasty e-mails and letters and phone calls by the hundreds,” he says.
Leatherby says he was mystified, because the Creamery had always enjoyed good relations with the gay and lesbian community.
And he says something interesting happened when demonstrators arrived outside his shop: Business went up, instead of down. “The day they picketed us, there were about 15 picketers, and that day we had people waiting two hours to get into our restaurant for four or five hours,” he says.
Not every backlash story ends that way.
Richard Raddon, director of the Los Angeles Film Festival, and Scott Eckern, director of the California Musical Theater in Sacramento, are devout Mormons. Both made contributions to Yes on 8, and both got demands for their resignations from gay rights protestors. They quit so their organizations wouldn’t face further controversy. Ironically, the film festival has been instrumental in introducing works by gay and lesbian filmmakers to a broader audience — and the musical theater included works by gay playwrights and composers.
See Backers Of Calif. Gay Marriage Ban Face Backlash
NPR
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Planned anti-gay demo falls flat
A threatened mass protest by an anti-gay US church failed to materialise when only one demonstrator turned up.
Fred Phelps and his daughter Shirley Phelps-Roper from the Westboro Baptist Church were banned from entering the UK to protest against a play in Hampshire.
They had urged a picket of Queen Mary’s College in Basingstoke over the staging of The Laramie Project, a play about a man killed for being gay.
But only one protester arrived and was heckled away by counter-demonstrators.
Play supporter Blake West was among about 50 students who protested against Westboro church outside the college on Friday.
See Planned anti-gay demo falls flat
BBC News, UK -
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Gay rights protestors take their message to holiday shoppers
About two dozen demonstrators gathered at one of Atlanta’s busiest shopping corridors Saturday to continue protesting California’s Proposition 8 and similar measures that prevent same-sex couples from marrying.
The afternoon protest at the intersection of Peachtree and Lenox roads — which separates Lenox Mall and Phipps Plaza — generated a steady stream of honking horns from drivers responding to signs like, “All I want for Christmas is equal rights” and “When can we vote on your marriage?”
See Gay rights protestors take their message to holiday shoppers
Southern Voice, GA
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Original source : http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2008/12/gay-rights-pr…
